Adam's Ultimate Gaming PC

By Ari Altman

Published February 2, 2016

Updated February 2, 2016

Adam's Feedback:

Thank you again for your guide. It really helped me out! It's hard to describe having a machine where I can run pretty much anything on MAX settings with no problems. I was running Rise of the Tomb raider with all MAX settings and it barely broke a sweat. I don't think the temp inside broke 50 Celsius. Everything runs about 23 Celsius just normal computing.

Built: January 2016

As shown above, Adam was able to use our $3,500 Ultimate Gaming PC Buyer's Guide to build a seriously-monstrous gaming system that had no trouble staying cool under pressure. He hooked it up to a 2560x1440 monitor with an absurdly-high 165Hz refresh rate, which in most games his system can actually hit(!). Adam lives in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, where we bet his system is the envy of all his friends!

Below is the parts list for Adam's PC, followed by a nicely-composed box shot prior to assembly:

Adam wasn't kidding around here - he went all in with a serious PC and a serious set of peripherals, including the best gaming monitor on the market, along with an amazing mechanical keyboard from Corsair and the best wireless mouse in the world, from Logitech. He also stocked up on Corsair's top-rated red LED fans to turn his system into a glowing work of art. Oh, and by the way, that Firefly box at the top - it's a USB-powered LED mousepad! TBG talked to Razer about that product at CES 2016, noting that it was a pretty genius idea. Apparently it's been selling like hotcakes for Razer!

And in case you haven't figured out exactly why his two video card boxes are so large, it's because they include pre-installed liquid coolers. The GTX 980 Ti GPU is known to push air coolers to the limit, and in so doing ends up being throttled due to hitting the 83°C temperature limit. Well, with liquid coolers, you'll never hit that threshold in a thousand years of gaming!

Of course, getting all this hardware into the case, even one the size of the full-tower Corsair Graphite 780T, was no mean feat. It definitely takes a bit of planning to make it all look right, and as you can see below, it does indeed look right. Righteous in fact!

Note the clutter-free cable routing and the nicely-bundled liquid-cooling hoses. Adam actually gave a ton of thought to the optimal cooling setup for this stunning machine, and here's how he explained his choices:

...I spent about a day trying to configure the best possible locations for everything with maximum airflow as possible. The 2 rads wouldn't fit on the back together and the same holds true for the bottom if you're using 3 120mm on the front. The two on the bottom actually overlap and you'd have to do some cosmetic work on the one to make it fit. The EVGAs also actually come with a warning pamphlet with the manual saying that for the best performance and life of the product that the rads should be install evenly with or above the GPU. So, that was another reason I didn't put them below. I run a push pull on both sides of the rad and figured that if I put them in front that even though the airflow was going to be coming in a little warm, there was plenty of airflow and distribution to cancel it out.

Yeah, it definitely looks good when the lights are out. In the photo here (click for the full-size image), you can see Adam's PC running the awesome new game Rise of the Tomb Raider, in full 1440p G-Sync's glory on his new Acer XB271HU monitor! This monitor has four critical features: G-Sync, IPS, 165Hz, and 1440p. These four specs combine to provide a gaming experience that can't be topped by any other monitor on the market today. Based on our benchmarking of Rise of the Tomb Raider thus far, we'd guess that Adam's hitting about 80fps at maximum settings, well within the sweet spot of G-Sync's frame-syncing technology. And lest you consider this a low framerate for an SLI system, consider that ROTR has the very best graphics of any game on any platform.

Despite how great his system looks today, Adam's not quite done tweaking his setup, despite how awesome it looks at this point. Here what he has planned:

I still want to replace the EVGA power cables with something cleaner, put on Primochill anti-kink coils to the tubing, install a LED strip, and replace that ugly SLI Bridge. But, I'm pretty happy overall with how it looks now and the color it gives when the lights are out.

In the meantime, game on, Adam. We'll be right there with you swinging the ice ax as we leap through the wonderous, wintry world of Rise of the Tomb Raider!